Saturday, January 02, 2016

There's a Heat Wave in the North Pole 
Cyclone and Above Normal Temperatures over North Pole:
Why not call it a Cyclone or Hurricane ??

Author's Note: Before reading this article, please do not link it with the "Climate Change" buzz...Changes and violent storms have occured in the region before. It would be too hasty, however, to pin last week's extreme weather directly on the manmade climate change phenomenon, rather than on a discreet anomaly.

From 27th December evening to 28th December morning, a mind-boggling pressure drop was recorded in Iceland: 54 millibars in just 18 hours. 
This triples the criteria for “bomb” cyclogenesis, which meteorologists use to describe a rapidly intensifying mid-latitude storm. A “bomb” cyclone is defined as dropping one millibar per hour for 24 hours.
NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center said the storm’s minimum pressure dropped to 928 millibars around 1 a.m. Eastern time, which likely places it in the top five strongest storms on record in this region.

“According to the center’s records, the all-time strongest storm in this area occurred on Dec. 15, 1986, and that had a minimum central pressure of 900 millibars,” Mashable’s Andrew Freedman reported on Tuesday. “The second-strongest storm occurred in January 1993, with a pressure of 916 millibars.”

Weather authorities blamed the 30th December temperature spike on the freak storm ( Why not call it a Hurricane?) which has already brought record Christmas temperatures to North America and lashed Britain with winds and floods.
The System then moved over Iceland and churned up hurricane force 75-knot winds and 30- foot waves in the north Atlantic while dragging warm air northwards.

Scientists from the North Pole Environmental Observatory said that the temperatures had climbed suddenly. An Arctic monitoring point 300 kilometres from the Pole that had been recording -37c degrees on 28th had shot up to -8c by 30th, said senior researcher James Morison.

The sudden heat wave is the result of a peculiar storm system that has produced a bizarre assortment of tornadoes and flooding across the southeast United States.
Earlier, meteorologists tracking the path of a powerful North Atlantic storm over Iceland had forecast that the Arctic temperatures could peak above freezing, with the storm being one of the strongest on record and wind speeds of up to 230mph (370km/h).

After tormenting the North Atlantic, the depression is expected to head towards Russia's Siberia, where the inhabitants can expect a heat wave of sorts.

Temperatures at the North Pole may not have topped the freezing mark — there are mixed reports from different weather buoys 
— but it was an unseasonably warm 30th December 2015 at the top of the globe. The storm system that brought spring-like Christmas warmth, along with deadly floods and tornadoes, to eastern North America swept across the pole with raging winds that sucked warm Atlantic air in its wake.

An international network of buoys sends back data from the high Arctic, and one of those — located at 87.3 degrees north latitude — recorded a high of just under 34 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius) on 30th December. But another, located a fraction of a degree further north at 87.5 N, only reported 16 degrees (-8.5 C) — still nearly 28c above the usual temperature for the end of December.

On the Norwegian island of Svalbard, the northernmost permanent settlement on Earth, Wednesday's high was nearly 9c. 

December's weather has been setting records, The unusually warm Atlantic has been fueling storms that are smashing ashore and causing heavy flooding in the U.s. and The U.K.

According to ocean measurements from the North Pole Environmental Observatory, the mercury tipped -1.9°C (28.6°F) on 30th as the Arctic bathed in an unseasonably warm spell.

Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson said, In New York, December temperatures at Central Park never dropped below freezing. In every previous December since 1871, temperatures had fallen below 0c at least six times."To me, these readings are even more impressive than the record warmth where nobody lives," Henson said.

And in central England — where temperature records date back to 1659— December is expected to end with a record average high.In Britain, a week of excessive rainfall has pushed rivers and streams well beyond their banks, stranding vehicles and buckling bridges.

The North Pole crossed over the freezing mark at least three times in previous Decembers — in 1959, 1990, and 2014, Henson said. This time, temperatures within a couple of hundred miles appear to have approached that point. 

Excerpts from Washington Post, vice news,Japan News,Pune Mirror, 

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